You asked for my biggest secret. I later told you that I look like my father. That is not my biggest secret, but it approaches the truth. I have his hazel eyes. He's the reason that I can carry a note. The smirk on my face belongs to him.

I wear it shamefully as my mother always told me she hated that I inherited his mannerisms. What I know that she does not, is that I inherited worse.

I call my biggest secret my "father's rage."

I can see my father's rage in those hazel eyes, pooling around my pupils. I can hear it in the notes I sing, an airy whisper from my lungs. I can see it when I turn to the mirror and scowl back at his face.
The truth is I carry my father's rage like a trapped scream in the back of my throat. A festering wound that does not scab over. Bubbling under the surface of my skin.

I plead with myself every day
to try to keep it at bay. Control the pain, control what I say.

Protect my children from the fate of inheriting my father's rage.